Dear friends,
My S is in the middle of being wrapped by Brett Miller of All American Paint Protection, located near the Rockville SC. Brett is very careful about all the details. My conversation with him over the phone and again in person convinced me that he cares about and thinks about every possible aspect of his work.
Wednesday night, my co-pilot and I drove our new S over to AAPP immediately after taking delivery. The car was exposed to the world for five minutes or less.
Brett and I did a thorough walk around the car and discussed every aspect. Brett immediately realized that he was looking at AP2.0 cameras that were new to him.
If I have them down correctly, I believe the cameras are these:
+ 3 forward-looking, mounted on rear-view mirror
+ 1 backward-looking, mounted on rear bumper
+ 2 side/backward-looking, mounted on little flanges on the side of the car
+ 2 side-looking, mounted on the B pillars roughly at head height behind driver's head
Wrapping is a non-issue for the cameras mounted on the rear-view mirror (although windshield tinting might be an interesting issue) and the rear-bumper mounted one. None of these get wrapped anyway.
The ones mounted on the side flanges are located in such a way that a body wrap will go around the flanges and never involve the cameras. So hopefully no issue there.
Finally, there are the two mounted on the B pillars. It's tempting to wrap them as there will be a single piece of plastic protecting that pillar. Cutting holes in that plastic means that there will be edges around the cameras... and stuff could accumulate at those edges, fingers could snag on them, etc. So it'd be nice to just do a single piece of plastic.
Out of an abundance of caution, Brett researched the issue. Here's what a birdie told him (in Brett's words):
I spoke with [redacted], and although those 2 cameras on the b-pillars are not active currently they will be in the next few months with the updates for the vehicle. They are in fact high def cameras and will distort the vision of the cameras therefor making them not operate properly. They will NOT void any warranties whatsoever.
I believe the translation of this report is: (1) a layer of plastic over the camera may well result in distortion and (2) even so, no warranty will be voided.
In any case, the upshot is that Brett is recommending that we NOT wrap the B pillars at all, to avoid the problem of cutting holes in it. Instead, he's going to apply a bunch of extra layers of Ceramic Pro. As the B pillar is rarely if ever involved in the kinds of incidents for which one purchases Xpel, I think it's a reasonable compromise. So I guess I'm getting a 95% body wrap.
Thanks,
Alan
P.S. From yesterday: front has been undergone paint correction, whatever other prep needed; wrapped in Xpel. I think this photo looks like something you'd see in an advertisement in an automobile magazine.
